Recently among dating show addicts there is a program that has newly spread by word of mouth. Released through the YouTube channel 'TtaeTtaeTtae', '72-hour blind date' is a dating reality program with the concept of a man and a woman who meet for the first time in an unfamiliar city traveling together for three days to get to know each other and decide whether to continue the relationship. It was planned by Black Paper CEO Yu Gyu-seon, well known as manager of Yu Byung-jae, and directed by Wonui Monologue and was first released on Sep. 9.
'72-hour blind date' begins the 'longest blind date in the world' by meeting a complete stranger in overseas cities such as Fukuoka, Bangkok, Hokkaido, Sapporo and Taiwan. Different in tone from existing sensational dating variety shows, it conveys a restrained yet deep emotional line and is spreading by word of mouth. OSEN met Black Paper CEO Yu Gyu-seon, who planned the world's longest blind date '72-hour blind date', to hear about the production.
Recalling the first stage of planning, CEO Yu Gyu-seon opened by saying, "The original title wasn't '72-hour blind date', it was 'check-in love'. Even now if you watch the Fukuoka episode you can see 'check-in love'."
He explained, "Originally the plan came as a mission to collaborate with Here How about and plan content with a travel keyword. I wondered what kind of trip would be the most memorable. I haven't had that experience, but I thought that meeting a romantic interest while traveling would be an experience you remember for life. I thought it would be a good subject if we could capture that realistically, and it started from the idea of making the film 'Before Sunrise' into a reality version."
He said that the title '72-hour blind date' was also created during filming in Fukuoka. Yu Gyu-seon added, "While filming the Hyung-gu-Miso episode the two felt it was a waste of time passing. They said 'Only a few hours left,' and normally the last day of a trip is the saddest, right? I thought it would make good content to show a process where time is limited and feelings deepen as time goes by, so we changed the title midway."
At the time the title design had already been produced. Yu Gyu-seon mentioned a fun point only insiders would know, saying, "So if you look in the middle you'll see 'check-in love' popping up here and there."
In a way, CEO Yu Gyu-seon became a full-fledged matchmaker through '72-hour blind date.' It wasn't a dating program with many cast members, so the burden must have been great. Asked whether he usually does well at matchmaking, he admitted, "I wasn't very interested in other people's relationships. I tried matchmaking and almost all of them failed. I even got cursed at."
CEO Yu Gyu-seon said, "Approaching it as a program I think we took various directions. Normally I matched people based on outward compatibility, but for the program I thought couples could form when their environments fit well rather than external aspects. I also thought the opposite case would stimulate curiosity. Sang-yeol and Chaewon probably both felt like strangers at first. They shared the commonality of working at a café, but had opposing characteristics of a large-company employee and a self-employed person. I tried to connect them also because Sang-yeol is quiet and Chaewon is talkative."
Asked how he planned to do casting and matching, he said, "We made the interviews very long. We didn't do Q&A-style interviews but chatted like casual conversation. At first it was mostly travel stories, and then the production team tried to find commonalities. We tried to become friends." He added, "For some participants I met one-on-one after the interview to talk. I thoroughly learned in advance what the person liked and in what environment they could show their charm before we started."
Yu Gyu-seon said, "Because the filming time is short, if ordinary people can't show their charm within two nights and three days I thought both I and the participants would be disappointed. I thought to create an attractive environment we needed to know the person as much as possible. I think we did a lot of skinship before filming." (Continued in interview②)<
[Photo] Reporter Jo Eun-jung, '72-hour blind date' broadcast capture
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